pointing the boss north: a guide

Perhaps, as a result of you spending twenty-five human dollars on skipping Dark Knight, you have decided to raid as a tank in current-expansion content. Or, perhaps you had already raided as a tank in Endwalker, only ever playing it in that expansion’s content. Either way, you’re probably learning, possibly as as a result of negative experiences, that tanks in Dawntrail are expected to actually do tank positioning.

It’s an oftentimes thankless job for the tank, but a necessary one; when it’s done well, it comes off as so effortless that nobody ever thinks to even notice you’re doing it, but when done poorly, everyone knows exactly who fucked it all up, and it’ll show just how badly you fucked it up in the numbers. Especially in certain savage fights, the difference is massive, and it means that failing to position the boss right is, in fact, an active DPS loss.

Tank positioning is a reverse raid buff; rather than boosting everyone’s damage, your goal is make sure nobody has to lose damage.

The Rules

Your priority system is going to look a little like this:

Let your melees be in melee range, and let your casters cast;
Let those melees hit positionals, and don’t make those casters lose potency on unneeded movement;
Ensure the boss does not do anything unnecessarily stupid that would makes the melees lose melee uptime/positionals, and the casters lose caster uptime/potency.

If you fuck up enough to sacrifice any given one of these, you sacrifice the lower priority; if you’re good, you’ll only have to sacrifice any of them when the fight forces you to.

In Dawntrail, many mechanics allow the tank to move the boss as needed while still resolving them. At the same time, those bosses will, just as often, forcefully move into a specific position, whether it be to the center of the arena, or the wall. To that end, your goal is not just to ensure that your casters can always cast, and that your melees can always land positionals, but also to minimize how far that forced movement goes whenever you’re in control.

Rather than try to give one, “clean” example of how this plays out, I’ll be going over each idea, the gameplan that works 95% of the time, and what to do for the other 5%.

Pulling The Boss

The Generic

Pull the boss ever-so-slightly south of the center of the arena, and then point them north. Trying to manually center the boss perfectly is a trap; bosses will often re-center themselves within the first minute, so as long as they aren’t moving much when they recenter, the actual priority is making sure they don’t spin around when they do.

The Exceptions

Is the boss going to go somewhere else? M4S has a good example of this, where the first thing that happens is that she goes far north. In that case, going far north in turn is perfectly reasonable.
Does the boss require other mechanics be resolved before re-centering? Some fights have bosses that take so long to re-center that it’s just smarter to pre-position them to the needed places beforehand. You don’t even need to do savage for the funniest example; in P4N, you can just fuck off to the corner, and then not need to move for well over a minute.
Does the boss even need to be centered, ever? This is mostly common in older fights, where you’re in full control of the boss the entire time. With no forced movement to play around, and no mechanics expecting you to move them, it’s always best to simply pick a good spot and stay there.

Holding the boss

The Generic

Keep them center. If the boss can move, make sure to do as much as you can to ensure it doesn’t. This means staying in melee range, and recognizing when mechanics don’t require you play as safe as you think. Remember, if you think you have to go far out one corner, and the boss is moved, that’s in direct contention to a melee in the opposite corner.

The Exceptions

Is everyone moving to one spot? Some mechanics, like the clones in M1S, somewhat demand there be a “new center”, where the melees can still hit the boss in relation to the possible places they go. Where this spot might be is highly context-sensitive, but more than likely, if you understand the mechanic, you probably already know a good place to put them.
Do the mechanics demand you move? If you have to go far, and the boss follows you in turn, there’s not much to be done. More than likely, it’s just going to be required for whatever strategy you make to include the melees following you. M2S’ Alarm Pheromones is especially a strong example of this; no amount of pre-planning will save you when your safe spot really does just require running a mile.
No, like, do they demand you move? Again, mostly something you’ll see in older fights like UCOB, but many mechanics might spawn in direct relation to where the boss is. In these situations, you’ll probably have exact details on when to move and where, so it’s not worth sweating over.

Pointing the Boss

The Generic

Keep them north. If you have to move around for a mechanic, get back to north as soon as it’s reasonable to. In most cases, north is somewhat arbitrary, but the goal is to pick the most predictable place for your melees to hit positions, and your melees almost certainly assume north for such things.

The Exceptions

Does the boss actively refuse to stay pointed north? Generally speaking, if a fight always ends up with a boss pointed one single way, it’s best for you to keep it that one single way. Some bosses just really want to be south, for one reason or another.
Does the boss have random mechanics that render any attempt to keep them one direction a waste of time? This can include if a boss can do mechanics from a random side of the arena, like Barbariccia EX, or when the boss baits towards a player in a way you can’t manipulate… also like Barbariccia EX. In these cases, it’s best to minimize what you can do with the boss, which means keeping them wherever they happen to be pointed once it’s back in your control, while moving them as needed for positionals.

Repositioning the Boss

The Generic

If the boss forcibly moves away from the center, re-position them back. Same idea as when you pulled the boss, only slightly modified for context. If the boss is likely to re-center quickly, treat whatever direction you’re pulling them as the new north, as you won’t have time to fully correct the boss; if there’s still quite a bit before then, do the same as the first pull, slightly south and pointed north.

The Exceptions

Does anything from the “Pulling the Boss” section still apply? As the same fundamentals still apply–in both cases, the boss is in a bad spot, and your goal is to put it in the “good” spot–you can apply the exceptions from there to here.

Extra Complaints

Do I need to do any of this

At minimum, you’ll be expected to do as much as your party expects you to. When everyone else builds strats assuming the tank can do these things, and you, as the tank, don’t want to, that puts you in pretty direct contention with how everyone else plans on playing.

But It’s Too Hard

Not really. Like all other things about tank, it’s one of those things where you just have to figure it out, and then once you do, it’s just as simple as doing it. Very likely, if you’re a tank from Endwalker and you believe this to be impossible, it’s because Endwalker was constantly making it difficult for tanks to matter.

But I’m the Off Tank

Off tank, as a concept, is a facade, and this game can and will force you to be a main tank at any time. Just because you technically can offload the entire responsibility to the other tank right now does not mean it won’t later force a minutes-long tank swap, or throw you into a two-target fight, both things ultimates will make you do. Even if it never did, you live in the real world, and in the real world, your “main tank” is going to die, and you’ll still have to do all this like the rest of us.

If you’re in the mood to make people mad at you for not playing the role, you’d be technically correct in that I can’t stop you.

That in mind, I would like to point out that you can just play a melee DPS, no tanking needed. Viper starts at level 80, and it’s as simple as a melee rotation can possibly get; I imagine if that’s all you’re here for, we could both be happier.